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This article is by Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix.

Papa Johns (Photo credit: mrsdkrebs)

At the most fundamental level, television advertisers are faced with a simple objective: Make an impression on viewers that distinguishes the brand. In a media environment where viewers are bombarded with countless messages on a daily basis, this goal can prove challenging. Whether a brand is unveiling a new product line, attempting to move itself in a new direction, trying to recover from negative publicity, or merely reaffirming its presence with consumers, there are a multitude of choices, tactics, strategies, and over-arching philosophies that can guide creative development.

One particularly interesting strategy is the ad that stars the company CEO. Whether this strategy brings forth mental images of Lee Iacocca vouching for the superiority of the Chrysler LeBaron, Frank Perdue guaranteeing the freshness of Perdue chickens, or Dave Thomas unveiling the latest combo meal at Wendy’s, ads featuring CEOs are not a new concept. Agencies are often put in the difficult position when a client CEO pushes to be in ads, whether or not the agency believes it to be an effective strategy for the brand. To that end, Ace Metrix is unveiling a study today that relies on the Ace Metrix database to provide hard data to answer the fundamental question: Is putting the CEO in an ad good for my brand?

While the strategy of “CEO as front man” has been adopted by numerous brands in the past 30 years, it’s never been entirely clear whether this strategy is effective—until now. The biggest concerns are: (1) failure by the CEO to come across as authentic; and (2) the inability of the brand to commit to the campaign for a period of time long enough to bring about success—which, in turn, can bring about a perceived sense of lack of authenticity. Thus, lack of authenticity is a key driver in failed CEO ads.

The results of our analysis show that, in general, ads featuring CEOs outperform ads that do not feature CEOs. Across every metric we measure, ads featuring CEOs had slightly higher average scores vs. other ads in the same category. However, this is not tosay that ads featuring CEOs always perform well. Averages are averages, and certain brands—two in particular—were more successful than others at producing effective “CEO as front man” advertisements. In particular, ads that feature CEOs have considerably higher “Desire,” “Relevance,” and “Information” scores than ads that do not feature CEOs. These three metrics measure the extent to which viewers want a product (Desire), can relate to the message of the advertisement (Relevance), and feel they learned something new from the ad (Information). All three are critical components of the Ace Metrix Persuasion score.

The restaurant industry is the most frequent adopter of the “CEO as front man” strategy, representing three-quarters of all CEO ads in the Ace Metrix database.[1] . Driving this is Papa John’s 47 ads featuring CEO John Schnatter,[2] which, by and large, perform well both quantitatively and qualitatively. “Verbatim” responses from consumers demonstrate that Schnatter is perceived to be “authentic” and “genuine,” two hallmarks of CEO ad success.

By the same token, Jim Koch of Samuel Adams and Sam Adams Light (Boston Beer Company) is another big success story. Unlike most brands featuring their CEO in ads, Sam Adams truly adopted the “CEO as front man” strategy, as every ad they aired in the past three years featured Koch. Sam Adams’ dedication to this strategy is the secret to their success, as the effectiveness of these ads is consistent: Samuel Adams tops the list of beer advertisers with an average score 25 points above the next best brand (Miller High Life). In addition, like Papa John’s, open-ended comments about Samuel Adams ads indicate that viewers were impressed with the brands’ “real-world,” informative appeals. Moreover, CEO Jim Koch’s commentary and tour of the beer brewing process (a feature of many Samuel Adams ads) resonates well with viewers.